--------------------------------------------- "The Adventures of Lone Wolf Scientific" ------------------------------------------ An electronically syndicated series that follows the exploits of two madcap enthusiasts of high-technology. Copyright 1991 Michy Peshota. May not be distributed without accompanying WELCOME.LWS and EPISOD.LWS files. ------------------------ EPISODE #5 ------------------------ Bad Days Befall The People's Republic of Engineering >>Super engineer-manager Gus Farwick contemplates his newest problem employee and formulates ways to keep him safely in his office.<< By M. Peshota Darkness had fallen on the happy land of the Gus Farwick Engineer Management Legacy. Not since The People's Republic of Electrical Engineering had suffered confounding problems learning the company song and been awash in confusion for days had the engineer-manager endured such nervous strain. The trouble started when he found his newest charge, Employee S-max, the self-proclaimed "famous computer designer," sifting through the jet engine pieces on the research department hall floor. He was looking for parts with which to build a champagne-filled Jacuzzi. Initiative like that troubled the engineer-manager. There was always the possibility that the employee would become so wrapped up in their little engineering diversion-- in Employee S-max's case, building a champagne-filled Jacuzzi--that they would completely forget to attend to the more important tasks in The People's Republic of Electrical Engineering, like practicing the company song(1) and reading the bulletin board outside Farwick's office. Then there was the problem of Employee S-max's so- called resume. Resumes were the engineer-manager's primary means of keeping in touch with reality. They were his soap opera and his song. Whenever one crossed his paper-piled, rubber band-strewn desk, he read it over scrupulously as though it were an inter-office memo from heaven. He ruminated on the long, elegant job titles and wished that he had one himself. He examined the quality of paper, held it up to the light, and tried to ascertain the cotton content. He reflected on what if any engineer management opportunities lay ahead of one who indented so sloppily. Employee S-max's resume, however, was the very opposite of vita-penned reality. Imagine having been arrested for pushing an IBM 360 across a Dairy Queen parking lot in the middle of the night wearing nothing but your shorts--as was noted under 'Professional Experience'! Imagine having been kicked off a Defense Department computer network for calling everyone on the network "Bud"--as was listed under 'Hard Won Accomplishments'! Imagine having fallen asleep in the trunk of the car of a Digital Equipment salesman and allegedly awoken the next day in a parallel universe where VAXen were nothing but little doodads that you tie to the toes of your ice skates to impress the girls--as was explained beneath the heading 'Education/Mystic Experiences'! The fact that this particular resume had arrived scribbled on the back of a Popsicle wrapper and had been heaved through the window of Farwick's office tied to some sort of electronic gigamaree flame-charred past the point of easy identification did little to assuage the engineer- manager's doubts about Employee S-max's suitability to design multi-billion dollar weapon systems that could potentially blow up the world. The fact that Employee S-max was constantly getting lost on the Dingready & Derringdo Aerospace parking ramp and the engineer-manager was forced to dispense each time a search party armed with tranquilizer guns to bring back the high-strung computer builder, merely bolstered his opinion that Employee S-max was not typical People's Republic of Engineering material. How he had gotten a laminated employee identification badge in the first place was a complete mystery to the engineer manager. Farwick was resigned to the fact, though, that until he could dream up some bureacratically cogent, one-sentence reason for firing Employee S-max and which could be printed neatly and legibly on the bottom of the "Employee Termination" form, the restive computer builder was here to stay. In the meantime, his ownly recourse was to formulate a plan for damage control. The beleaguered manager extracted from his desk drawer a thick-lined tablet labeled "Gus's Own Brainstorms." It was a souvenir of one of those high-priced engineering project management seminars that he attended so frequently and which were often underwritten by IBM--as was the matching hot pink marker embossed with the motto "Manage First, Think Later!" which he also extracted from the drawer. The quoin of his plan, he resolved, inking "Big Plan" at the top of the tablet in bold, decisive strokes with the marker, would be to keep the so-called "famous computer designer" safely in his desk chair. There would be no more riffling through the jet engine pieces on the hallway floor for him. There would be no more traipsing into other offices with his over-stuffed prototyping boards where he might enlist other employees in his eccentric engineering escapades. The only time that Employee S-max would be permitted to leave his office would be once a day when a Farwick-designated escort would pick him up and walk him down the hall to read the bulletin board outside the manager's office. At all other times, he would be strictly quarantined to his desk. Farwick couldn't decide whether to give Employee S-max a phone or not. It might be wise, he reflected, continuing to jot these gems of research engineer management brilliance onto the tablet under the heading "B-storm," to give Employee S-max a phone, but not the ability to dial out. Oh, how he would have loved to give him a couple thousand hours worth of Dingready & Derringdo Aerospace employee motivation cassette tapes with which to fill his time ("Now, just relax and concentrate on the phrase 'jet propulsion'...."), but that would mean that he would also have to give him a tape recorder with which to listen to them, and Farwick wasn't so sure that he cared to give Employee S-max access to anymore electronics than was absolutely necessary. The engineer-manager had one final weapon for keeping the unruly computer designer safely in his desk chair. Like many of his other employee relations innovations, it was nothing less than pure MBA brilliance. (Not surprisingly, Farwick had two of them. One in marketing, or more specifically, how to prevent marketing from ever taking your engineers seriously, and another in business communications, or more specifically, how to avoid active verbs, concrete nouns, and phrases whose meaning can be pinned down with any certainty in all written and spoken forms of communication.) He would put Employee S-max in charge of rolling up the long pieces of kite string that Dingready & Derringdo tied to individual components of complex, multi-billion dollar weapons systems so that they could be easily assembled on the battlefield with nothing but a few slipknots. It was a chore that was guaranteed to keep the all-thumbs computer designer occupied for months at a stretch. Why, just keeping track of the coffee cans in which the kite string was stored would require titanic organizational skills, the kind Employee S-max clearly lacked. What's more, given his resume-revealed propensity to muddle along pointlessly on engineering projects for indefinite stretches of time, it was a task to which he was ideally suited. (Farwick would have liked to also put him in charge of keeping track of the Post-It Notes that the defense contractor affixed to individual components of multi-billion dollar weapon systems and which explained to military personnel how to knot the strings together and correctly pronounce the name of the complex weapon system, but that might be asking for trouble.) As Farwick returned the cap to his pink marker, he rejoiced. Not only had he once again solved a particularly icky personnel crisis in typical Farwickian fashion, but he had figured out a way to take an allegedly top computer designer and have him spend his days rolling up kite string. What genius! What moxie! In the otherwise unextraordinary mind of engineer- manager Gus Farwick, the opening pages of Tom Peters' "In Search of Excellence, Part II--The Farwick Principle" zoomed into view--as they often did during emotionally moving moments such as this. As usual, the pages spared no awe, no managementese-choked superlatives, in extolling the glory and wonder of the Gus Farwick Engineer Management Legacy. ("Where life is so sober and well-ordered, the research department is indistinguishable from the elevator lounge of a convalescent home.") And oh, what a legacy it was! ------------------------------------------------------ (1) "Onward Dingready Soldiers, as Sung to Chariots of Fire" by Gus E. Farwick, -- "[Refrain]: Our blowtorches are ready, our shoe-strings are tied; Our courage is in order, our desks are too; Our glasses are polished, our shirts are pressed (and are in possession of all their buttons too); Our mission is looming, our courage is too. [Stanza]: And when the dawn breaks o'er our research sub- sub-sub-sub-basement we'll be waiting; to build a better spy plane or maybe an onboard doughnut maker for a B-2; But the thing we are best at is the thing we most like to do; And that is designing things that explode only if they're supposed to. Oooh-oooh!" [Repeat refrain.]" <<<<